Where Do We Begin?
by Raikune
Summary: Pre-TDK. AU. Bruce Wayne first met the young Joker when they were both children. This is a snapshot of the beginning of that friendship, before they became enemies.


**A/N**: I've always been interested in the idea of Bruce Wayne and the Joker starting off as childhood friends who then fall out and later become nemeses, a bit like what happened between Clark Kent (Superman) and Lex Luthor. So I've written this one-shot imagining their first meeting :D

**Title**: Where Do We Begin?  
**Author**: raikune  
**Fandom**: (pre-) The Dark Knight  
**Rating**: PG  
**Genre**: AU, friendship  
**Pairing**: Young Bruce Wayne+Young Joker friendship  
**Summary**: Second-person POV. One-shot. They weren't the Batman or the Joker…just a couple of kids who'd found each other.

**Notes**: This relationship is purely imaginary and is in no way connected to the comics or movie background canon. Since this is pre-TDK, just imagine a very young Christian Bale and Heath Ledger :) This was originally posted to the knivesandlint Dark Knight community on Livejournal.

--

Your face was clean: no make-up, no greasepaint. And you had the widest, most charming smile he'd ever seen on an eleven-year-old: a bright mischievous grin unspoilt by the fresh cuts gashing your cheeks. If anything, those red scrawls made your smile even more intriguing. They lent your face an odd charm.

That's the first thing Bruce Wayne remembers about you: the boy who would become his best friend…and Batman's greatest enemy.

He remembers your innocent smile.

You were standing in front of the park bench where he sat (feet dangling a little, Bruce still hadn't gotten his growth spurt), weight on one foot so you listed slightly to the side. Your hair was a dark curly blond. Eyes, brown. You wore a dark crumpled corduroy jacket; olive-colored and so big the wide sleeves drooped down to your fingers. Your trousers were probably khaki, but Bruce wasn't paying much attention to them. It was those jagged gashes his eyes were fixed on. Those _cuts_.

That _smile_.

This thirteen-year-old boy dressed in rich-kid's clothes looked up into your dark, playful eyes and impish grin…and, ignoring his instincts, something he's _never_ done before…smiled back.

And said softly, "Hi."

And he took your hand, almost swallowed by your sleeve, took you away from Gotham's crowded park to a hospital to have your cheeks stitched. You went willingly. The earlier pain and confusion that resulted in your scarred face dimmed. Instead, this silent serious boy – Bruce Wayne, he tells you – smoothly and effortlessly became the center of your universe. You liked his understanding, intelligent gaze and slow smile.

He sat by your hospital bedside, after the doctors and nurses and social workers had left (they upset you so he dismissed them, coolly and easily as if he owned the place – he didn't, as it turns out; he only owns a hospital wing). Bruce looked so solemn, so sad that you wanted to make him smile. Make him laugh. You'd tell him a joke – you know a lot of funny ones that would sure crack him up! – if the drugs they'd given you for the pain weren't making you so woozy.

So you just kept on smiling at him. Hoping he got the message. Hoping he could read in your eyes what your mouth couldn't say: _thank you_.

Because although _you_ found _him_, in a strange way he also found _you_.

_Maybe you found each other_…this last thought turned out the lights.

Bruce Wayne watched as your eyes flickered closed, sinking into a dreamless and painless sleep. Inside him was a rage he couldn't fully understand, young as he was, it spiked whenever he saw those filthy cuts ripping at your cheeks. He couldn't understand who would do something like that to a child. The indecency and heartlessness of the act…the pure savagery…it stunned him, shook him to the core. Bruce looked at his hands, saw that they were trembling.

He glanced again at your face nestled against the pillow, at your blond curls. A wave of feeling engulfed him then, much like a sudden tide: huge and terrifying, bright and hot as lightening…a desire to protect so strong it made his temples pound. The rage in him died to a simmer, but was not extinguished. Bruce let his breath out slowly, listening to the vibrations of his thoughts in his head.

His instincts nagged at him. He was utterly sure that bringing you in to the hospital had been the right thing to do. Bruce, even at this age, had a strongly-developed sense of justice. What he had done was right.

_But_.

For the briefest second when he'd first looked at your face, at your bleeding smile…some faint alarm had triggered in his head. Bruce was a logical boy, he'd never believed in superstitions or premonitions…but a deep intuition spoke to him now from a dark part of his mind, a part that watched and waited. _Stay away_, it said. _Stay away from the boy…and keep away_.

He lashed out at this voice furiously. _Someone cut him up. He needed my help. He came to me...not to an adult, to_ me. _He's my responsibility now_. Breathless, he waited, but the doubts had been silenced.

Bruce Wayne left the hospital with a firm step and a clear head. Tomorrow he'd come back, with questions ready and his energy refreshed. And, he thought, as he waited by the curve for Alfred to pick him up, perhaps he'd bring a toy along too. He still had toys in his closet that his parents had bought him, though he rarely played with them nowadays. But he decides that maybe a toy is just what you need.

Bruce looked forward to tomorrow. He had an idea…ever so tentative, any more probing and it might burst…that he and you would become good friends. Because he remembered your smile: so completely open and trusting. No one's ever smiled at him like that before.

He thinks that maybe at last he's found a friend.

-end-

A/N: Reviews welcomed :


End file.
